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Revisiting the claim that young evangelicals are more progressive

Leading religious observers claim that evangelicalism is shrinking and the next generation of evangelicals is becoming less religious and more secular, but (as we social scientists like to say) these are empirical questions, and the evidence shows that neither of these claims is true. The number of evangelicals remains high, and their percentage among practicing Christians in America is, if anything, rising. Young evangelicals are not turning to more liberal positions on controversial social issues; in some cases they are becoming more conservative than their parents. Perhaps young evangelicals have become more socially aware and have a longer, broader list of social concerns, but they remain socially conservative.

We found [that] Younger evangelicals were, in fact, sometimes more conservative than their elders. More of the young believed that abortion of a child conceived as the result of rape was almost always or always wrong (61 percent versus 50 percent of older respondents), and more believed that stem cell research was almost always or always wrong (61 percent versus 51 percent). Younger evangelicals were no less conservative than their elders on marijuana use,...homosexual marriage,...government spending on health care,... and the war in Iraq.